


Mornings Like This

by grav_ity



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 18:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19446889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grav_ity/pseuds/grav_ity
Summary: He knows she finds these solitary awakenings unsettling. He’s gotten pretty good at making it up to her.





	Mornings Like This

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY, so I got a littttttttle distracted from my DAO series by Inquisition. Just a little. By which I mean a lot. Please enjoy this while I piece together a few other things. ;)
> 
> This takes place after Trespasser.

Adara Trevelyan wakes up alone and tries not to think too much about it. Cullen doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body, not now that he’s worked so hard to excise any perceived faults, but sometimes he just cannot remain inside when he’s newly up. He knows she finds these solitary awakenings unsettling. He’s gotten pretty good at making it up to her.

The manor house on the estate Divine Victoria had found for them was in total disrepair when they arrived. Left to his own devices, Cullen would have happily stayed in one of the back bedrooms, never thinking to assume the place of the property’s lord. The master suite was covered in green moss and cracked plaster, but it had a balcony with a pair of glass doors that had somehow weathered all right. There was a little staircase down to the gardens, and that’s how she convinced him to live there.

They had sanded and repainted the floors, stripped and replastered the walls, and filled in all the cracks around the windows. The decoration they’ve chosen is solid, Fereldan, and plain. Sometimes Adara can almost hear Josie sigh and roll her eyes, but the homemade quilts, carved-wood furniture, and brightly woven rugs make Cullen comfortable, so it’s more than worth it.

The most expensive thing in the room isn’t a thing at all, and it hadn’t cost them any money. Cullen’s Mabari Fetch, the hound he’d found in the Winter Palace (because of course he had), occupies pride of place by the fire. The kennel master complains that no Mabari is meant to sleep inside, even if the rug is Fereldan wool and there isn’t an Orlesian affectation in sight, but the hound persists in being good at fetch and bad at evasion, and maybe, just maybe, his fighting days are behind him, too.

Adara can’t hear the dog or the man this morning, but she can feel a cold morning breeze, and knows where they have gone. She braves the cool air long enough to use the privy and to add a few logs to the fire, before she climbs back under the warm blankets to wait.

The estate wakes up slowly most days. Cullen and Fetch rise before the dawn and do one circuit of the gardens via the balcony stairs to avoid waking the light sleepers inside. The rooms are full of healers and cooks and stablehands, along with ten to fifteen Templars in varying states of withdrawal. Cullen’s role is more administrative and inspirational than he imagined, and Adara has no official job beyond foraging and emotional support, but neither of them minds that very much. Their priorities have not changed.

In a lot of ways, Cullen’s clinic functions the way Skyhold did, albeit on a different scale. People come, attracted by opportunity, and many of them come back: merchants, tinkers, a variety of traveling craftspeople. It’s a village, not an international power to be reckoned with, but it’s definitely flourishing. More traffic on the roads might have been a problem, but King Alistair has a particular interested in changing old systems, and increases the royal army’s patrol in the area. There have been setbacks: relapse for the Templars and burnout for the healers, but generally speaking they are doing quite well.

That success, Adara knows, is what drives Cullen from their bed before the sun comes up. He’s ill-suited to peace, not because he yearns for violence, but because he is too used to penance. It’s hard for him to accept the good work he’s done as enough, always feeling the pinch of some unfathomable debt he owes the universe. They’ve never talked about it, not in so many words, but Adara knows her husband never feels quite content.

It doesn’t bother her, except that it bothers him. She thinks of solutions and waits for a chance to deploy them. She knows better than to push.

At the start, the healers had been almost as much for her as they were for the Templars. Her physical wounds had been obvious: the arm chief amongst them, but the mental scars of Solas’s betrayal burned even more deeply. She’d forced herself to power through, to re-learn the lacing of her clothes and the balance of a bigger knife now that she could no longer fight with two. She had raged her way to recovery, snarling at anyone who came too close, and even Cullen had not escaped her wrath.

And he had kept loving her the whole time. Through her incoherent anger at the elven apostate; through her self-flagellation at failing to understand what Sera had been trying to tell her; through her self-imposed isolation after she disbanded the Inquisition to save it. He would kiss her fingers and pull her close to him under the blankets, no matter what storms he’d weathered during the day.

She’d hated mornings, though. Until she’d calmed.

The Inquisition is gone, but she is beginning to understand that it is not that simple. You can’t disband an idea. She has contacts across the world, embedded in armies and kitchens and merchant camps and Chantries. They are united in purpose still, and they have not forgotten her. Orlais is bleeding elves, Ferelden at a moderately slower rate, and Adara is determined that this time, she will not be caught unawares.

She stretches, arching her head back into her pillow with her arm above her, and considers her schedule for the day. She is meeting with Dalish envoys from Ferelden and the Marches, hoping to discuss the Dread Wolf, and what accepting him would mean. The talks have been successful before—Sera mostly sticks to talking with Jennys and city elves—and their progress has been good. Adara misses Josie, even though elves were not their ambassador’s forte, but she’s optimistic.

The room darkens as Cullen appears at the balcony door. Fetch isn’t with him, which means they stopped in at the kitchens on their way back. Adara stretches again, more obviously this time, and throws the corner of the blankets back, her invitation clear. Cullen smiles, latches the door shut against the morning chill, and crosses to the bed, shedding clothing as he moves. He slides into bed behind her, his arm coming around her waist and pushing her a little bit forward, off-balance.

His hands are cold and she flinches, but that only makes him laugh. He traps her against his chest, cold fingers ghosting over her belly and breasts, and she can’t help trying to wriggle out of his grasp. That leads to other interesting developments, and he groans in not-quite surrender as her rear shifts against his half-hard length.

It’s an awkward position, without an elbow to lean on, but he holds her steady as he hooks one of her feet behind his knees. His fingers are almost warm enough as they skate across her thighs, and he presses wet, open-mouthed kissed against her neck. She shifts a bit, reaching across herself to brace with the arm that’s still there, and then his hand slides between her legs, and she arches into him.

At Skyhold, it was always all or nothing, taking what the moment could give. Now, his fingers stroke her like they will grow old together, unhurried even as she writhes breathless against him. His teeth are in her shoulder, softly but a bite nevertheless, and she grinds into his touch, desperate for more.

He never makes her feel vulnerable. She can break his hold, even off-balance with one arm, but she doesn’t. His breath is hot against her neck, his name on her lips. She can feel the hard press of his cock behind her, but she knows he won’t take her until she comes, no matter how much she begs him for it.

She lets him work her to the very edge, and then push her over it. She comes gasping into the pillow, her face turned down to try to stay a little bit quiet, and he takes advantage of her distraction to sheathe himself entirely in one smooth thrust. Neither of them can move much, but he rocks against her and she squirms back into him, and it’s enough. His mouth is full of her hair and his hand is back between her legs and it’s almost too much. She’s barely through the first orgasm when the second one hits her, and then he pushes her all the way over to fuck her into the mattress, chasing his own end.

The morning sounds of the house cut through their afterglow before she wants it too. Healers, as a group, tend to be early risers, and they only push the Templars to break one habit at a time. Cullen’s arms are around her, and he’s flipped her over so that her arm can splay across his chest. They will have to get up, soon. There will be symptoms to treat and requisitions to fill, and Fetch will get into no end of mischief if they don’t retrieve him from the kitchens soon. 

If they’re lucky, there will be messages and maps and something closer to the plan they’ve been blundering towards since the Inquisition ended. It's a patchwork, fragmented by distance and ever-shifting politics, but their friends and contacts remember, and so she does her best to honour that. So far, it’s been nothing but guesswork and hope, but on mornings like this, Adara Trevelyan knows she won’t face the uncertainty alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so smug about naming that Mabari.


End file.
